No mere case of gigantism is going to dissuade me from making worlds most adorable purse.

Plus, who knows when you might need to dispose of a body ... in style. ;)

(P.S. I know people who use feed readers have already seen this ... it's unbelievable how fast readers pick up a published post.  Literally within a minute or so!  

Now you know my secret.  When I have a couple spare hours I write a post or three and set them to publish in the future.  I'm planning on posting my flower purse updates on Saturdays, which is why I didn't leave this one up when I accidentally set it to publish.)

OMG ... you know how I love a long rambly post, right?  Stories and stories and stories.  But there's no time today, so you're getting the 411 bullet-list style.  My apologies.

• yarn from Tiffany from Caffeinated Crafter
• inspired by June from Planet June
• crocheted four different times
• made the right width/length to use every inch of yarn
• except for the three inches that were left over (for real)
• made for work
• black to match everything
• rainbow sprinkles to match nothing
• black buttons with fake leather detailing - one circular, one square-ular
• WARM, hooray!

Now that I see June's again, mine looks HUGE.  Oh, well, it'll keep me warm, right?

HP sent me a Photosmart B8550 Printer to review.  Read about installation, its bells and whistles, and printing photos on my review page.  

I've started the flower purse from this book.  I'm using the smallest hook I dare with the worsted weight cotton, and it appears that the purse is going to be GIANT sized.  Since there's no people in the pictures in the book, I just made up in my head that the purse was smallish.  FAIL.  
Look how wide that is (33 inches)!  It gets gathered a lot along the top edge, but I still think I'll be able to fit a medium-sized pony in there!  Maybe there's something about the physics of Japanese crochet patterns that I just don't understand yet. :)
Before I started I was stressing about what colors to make it in.  I think I've got some sort of block against making something according to the pattern.  I finally decided to make it like the picture because (1) I have those colors of yarn already, and (2) I didn't think I'd ever be able to decide on a color scheme.

The Japanese crochet book I posted about has just about everyone flipping out to get it. And you really should, because it's awesome!

Since it's a Japanese book (ISBN 9784579111138), published in Japan, you have to get it from a Japanese distributor.  I got mine at the Japanese bookstore Kinokunika in New York.  You could also order it from a Japanese website, like Amazon jp.

Many people, like my friend Kuky, have used Amazon Japan to get craft books.  I haven't worked up the gumption to try it yet.  I always think new things are 300% harder than they really are, though.  But it *is* Amazon, for crying out loud, and they added English to their site since I looked last, so maybe I'll overcome my gumption deficit soon ...

The book on Amazon.jp (if there is a link that says "In English" in the top right or "To translate this page in English, Click here" is above the yellow buy button ... click it!)

This book is in Japanese.  The only English are words in the book are "Page" and "Endpaper", but don't let that deter you.  The illustrations and charts are amazing and clear.  With even a beginner's knowledge of crochet, you'll be able to figure things out.

There is a ton of information about Japanese craft books on Crafting Japanese. See the links under the heading "WHERE TO GET 'EM" for lots of great information.

Read New York Weekend, Part 1

On Sunday there was a street fair right outside our hotel on 8th Avenue (near Times Square).  I checked out the booths from our 4th floor window before we headed out.  Once we were on the street, I made a beeline for the roasted corn on the cob.  Delicious!  They just peel back the husk and you hold it by that while you nibble away the hot, yummy corn.

It was kind of a sad street fair.  Not enough variety for me.  Each block had the exact same booths and they weren't all that interesting.  But luckily I spied these little marble chotchkes before we gave up on the street fair.

These little guys were only a dollar each.  I think I picked up every single little animal on the table.  There were so many animals and so many kinds of marble.  I could have gone home with arm-loads of little owls.  They had big owls, too.  But this was the start of the day and hauling around several pounds of marble owls ALL DAY would have crippled me.

I ended up with a deep gray owl with piercing yellow eyes, a stripey squirrel with bright blue eyes, and a wonderful cock with a natural red vein in its marble right where its comb would be.  I love them all so much.  I haven't named any of them yet.  They're about an inch tall.

I posted 9 new architectural detail photos in my Flickr set called Architectural Animals.  I finally figured out that you can sort them by date uploaded, so they're the first ones in the set.  There's a squirrel, three(!) owls, some creepy guys, and other goodies.  With notes!

I didn't have a camera with me, so I pestered Andrew take all of those photos as we walked through the city, "Ooo!  Ooo!  Get that owl for me.  Please.  Pretty please!"  He's such a sweetheart.  He even snapped an animal or two without me asking.  But by the end of the day he'd had enough of stopping every-other-block, and out of nowhere I heard him say, "No no no!  Don't even ask."  And then I saw the most amazing dragons clutching at fence posts.

Maybe next time, dragons. :)

In addition to being my photo-slave, Andrew took a ton of his own photos.  His gallery of our trip has some awesome photos in it.  I think it's one of his most varied galleries yet.  There are all sorts of images ... glass and leaves,  manual focus experiments, compositional studies, and candids.  The argument could be made that I'm biased, but I think he's the kick-ass-est photographer around.

We went to New York last-last weekend (aka the weekend before this last one) for the first time since we got rid of the car.  Let me tell you, I love taking the train!  There's lots of leg room, big comfy seats, and crochet-time galore.  If it wasn't so expensive I'd take the train up every weekend just for the relaxing craft-time.

Last time we were in New York I passed up a Japanese crochet book I really wanted because I was being frugal.  Then I ended up spending more buying it from Etsy because I just couldn't wait any longer.  Well, thank goodness I did because they didn't have a copy of it in the store ... or it's sister-book.  Last time I was there they had multiple copies of each one.  They must be super popular.

So this time I decided that I'd let myself indulge in one Japanese craft book.  As I looked through Every. Single. Craft. Book. in the craft section, I mentally noted all the maybe-this-ones in my head.  But when I got to this crochet book (ISBN 9784579111138)I knew I HAD to have it.  It's from 2006 and I've seen it a lot.  My heart skips a beat every time I see the bag on the front and it's multicolored doppelganger on the back.  

Most of the projects in the book are made from joining motifs and I'm very interested in that right now.  I'd love to get a feel for the mechanics of joining motifs and creating 3-D shapes from them.  There are tons of motifs in my books that I'd love to turn into purses.

I haven't had a chance to start making anything yet, but I'll show you as soon as I do.  Most of the book is actual projects, but there are four pages of motifs.  Aren't they just gorgeous?



Read New York Weekend, Part 2

Well, it's unanimous ... everyone adores this gorgeous fabric!  It was bought to cover the serving tables at a baby shower.  What a cute idea, right?

When I was asked to make them I thought, "Super-cake!"  Then, when the ginormous 57-inch by 240-inch piece of fabric was delivered I thought, "Holy crap!"  Working large-scale has it's own unique challenges just like working in teeny-tiny-scale.  But I figured out a great way to easily do the hemming, so even though it wasn't super-cake, it was still cake.  And who doesn't love cake?!

Once I trimmed the huge-o piece of fabric into two tablecloth-sized pieces (thank goodness for the rotary cutter!), it was time to figure out how-in-the-world to hem the edges.  I sat there staring at the edge ... I knew I couldn't be fussy and do my normal "fold over the edge measuring as I go, iron, fold the edge again, iron, and then sew it" thing.

Then, as I stuck the fabric in the sewing machine to just "do something" I had an idea ... why not just sew a line half-an-inch in and use that as the fold guide.  So smart!  I'm so glad I thought of that before I started sewing a bunch of stuff I'd just have to rip out.

Here's the scoop with pictures:

(1) Sew along the edge half an inch in from the edge.
(2) Use the sewing line to fold the fabric over half an inch.  Then fold that over again another half an inch.
(3) Pin! The fabric should be wrong side up with the bulk of it away from you, like in the picture.  But your pins should be in the other way.  When they are in the right way, they'll be easy to pull out from underneath of your hem as you sew.
(4) See?  When you're pins are in right you can pull them out.  Or forget like I did a couple of times.  My sewing machine went right through the plastic heads like they were butter.  I love my sewing machine!  Sew a 3/8-inch seam.
(5) Here's the back side of the sewn hem.  All the raw edges are contained in the hem.  You can see the edge of my initial sewing line, but it doesn't look bad.
(6) And, finally, here's the front side of the seam.  Yay!
This system made quick work of this project, and that's saying a lot when you figure that I sewed almost 56 feet of hems.  That's almost nine yards!  Wow.  And the best part of this project is that they will have all this amazing fabric left over after the baby shower.  Imagine all the fun stuff you could make with it!  I keep imagining the cutest set of reusable grocery bags.  Shopping in style!

I tried to find it online so I could link to it, but I had no luck.  The edge says P/Kaufman, but that's it.  If anyone knows what fabric it is, let me know because I'm sure people are going to email me and ask.  It's a heavier weight cotton that has a stain resistant finish on it.

That's the sound the last week made for me.  I have so many things to tell you, but I've got laundry and cleaning and grocery shopping and sewing (I'm making some cute tablecloths for someone ... they're in the picture above).  Hopefully I get a chance to check in soon.  I miss you guys so much!

It's hard to believe that it's just a coincidence that these three things match perfectly.  One is my current organizational notebook (there's a little glare on it in the photo ... here's a better photo as far as color is concerned).  One is the book I'm reading right now, Walden*.  One is fabric from Ikea.  I totally love the charcoal brown and acid green mix.  I think it's the new "light blue/chocolate brown" for me.  But don't you think the world is trying to tell me *something*?  I don't usually believe in signs and omens, but they really have EXACTLY the same colors in them.

In other acid green news (as far as my shirt is concerned), I made it into some of the event pix from the Midwives Collective gallery opening on Friday.  You can see me through the door sculpture here and here (check out the large size of this one.  I swear I didn't know they were taking pix ... it's a completely accidental freak-face).  

Check out the rest of the Gallery Show Flickr Set, too, especially if you won't have a chance to go see it in person (which I totally recommend!).  There is a lot of cool stuff at the show, not the least of which is the directly-on-the-wall piece on which the three artists collaborated.  So much detail!

* Why didn't someone ever tell me what a cranky misanthrope Thoreau was?!  I would have read this book years ago!  I thought he was some warm-fuzzy tree hugger.  Nope.  He's a man after my own crusty, alone-loving heart.